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Inside and Content
Brill's complex deal with Primedia falls apart
When Steve Brill earlier this year pulled off a deal that brought the struggling web site Inside.com into a complex partnership with his Content magazine and Primedia's Media Central web site, many in media wondered how long it would last.
That question was answered yesterday when Brill announced that his partnership with Primedia was over, after weeks of widely reported efforts to either reach terms with Primedia to keep the struggling enterprise alive or secure financing that would enable Brill to acquire control of Inside.
Brill's Content, launched in 1998 as a print title and web site of media criticism, is suspending publication.
Inside, launched in 2000 as a web site covering the media and entertainment industries, will remain with Primedia but in name only.
Some 38 staffers of Brill's Content and Inside were told yesterday that they were out of their jobs.
Media Central, with which Inside was merged back in April, will continue in a more modest role as a web site posting online contributions from Primedia's media trade publications, such as Folio and Cable World.
Under the deal reached with Primedia back in January, Primedia took a 49 percent interest in Brill Media Ventures, and Brill joined Primedia to head its Media Central operations, which include a slew of trade magazines and newsletters, in addition to the web site.
The Brill-Primedia venture was plagued by the grim advertising climate that has affected the entire media marketplace through this year. Primedia was especially hurt by the downturn and was under increasing pressure from stockholders to trim costs. Those pressures in turn increased tensions between Brill and Primedia CEO Tom Rogers over the direction of Media Central.
Brill had sold Rogers on the idea by arguing that bringing all the properties under one roof would save the company money, but by all reports the ventures proved far more expensive to integrate than Brill had anticipated.
But more fundamentally there were also real doubts as to whether a successful venture could ever emerge through the merger of properties that on their own had never made money and seemed destined to continue losing money as independent ventures.
Brill's Content was launched on the premise that America was ready for a magazine that would serve as a serious watchdog over media. The expectation was that the publication would attract as readers not only journalists but a far wider audience of people concerned with the role major media organizations play in shaping public opinion and public policy.
That readership never materialized. Content's circulation never exceeded 400,000. Several months ago, Brill reduced Content's frequency to four times a year from monthly. Brill recently shuttered Contentville, a related web site.
Inside, founded by respected editors Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn, was launched on the premise that America was ready for a web site offering the inside skinny on all the doings of the media and entertainment industries.
It was to be read not just by those within the industries covered but a far larger audience that was assumed to be fascinated by the powerful figures who ran them. But here, too, readership fell far short of expectations, and the site had run through much of its nearly $30 million in investment capital when Brill came along and offered to acquire the venture.
The third leg of the venture, the Media Central web site, had been in existence in some form far longer, but it, too, had never made money for Primedia, and by some reports had actually clocked losses in the millions.
October 16, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
